Pride
by Thanfiction
Summary: Sometimes it's about drawing lines. Sometimes it's about crossing them. Sometimes the lines don't matter. The last entry in the 7 Sins series.


What you did wasn't really the thing that told you what you did. He'd had long, slow, candlelit and rose-scented sessions of soft caresses and gentle kisses with women whose names he hadn't known and never found out and didn't care to. He'd had five-minute hair-pulling clothes-ripping bend her over and take her against a counter fucks with the mother of his child. He'd recited Byron to bleach-blonde dead-eyed waitresses with dry-erase nametags behind truckstop diners and called giggling white lace panty homecoming queens with purity rings dirty whores and cunts because they liked that kind of talk. He'd fucked a fallen angel in the back of the Impala like a small town cheerleader and now another in sheets that had left prickles of broken glass in the back of his shoulders.

It wasn't about what you did. It was what you did after.

Clean up with a handful of paper napkins, zip up and a kiss on the cheek and let her finish her shift (break's only a 15). Run like hell from the arrival of the heavily armed authority figure in her life (doesn't matter if you're armed too). Climb out a window and throw a burger to the dog and walk a mile to where you left the car (fucking dogs). Let her fix you a disposable Tupperware of once-frozen lasagna and throw it away as you head back to the motel (why was it always lasagna or casserole). Doze off and then sit up quick and yank the covers back because shit Sam's coming back and where the fuck is her bra (not so often since text messages). Sleep the night and wake up in her arms and make breakfast (rare). Do it more than once (rarer).

This time was confusing. Fair enough. Everything about this whole mess didn't seem to like boxes, so why should the after be any different? Cas had fallen asleep almost instantly, which made sense because the dude had been through way too much already, and getting your species ripped out seemed like the kind of thing that would be pretty exhausting. That wasn't confusing. The confusing part had been that for all he told himself he was just kind of going along with it and what the hell and it was almost like drunk!sex, he'd stayed.

Stayed and pulled Cas into his arms without waking him and just held him, with his lips in the soft spot behind Cas' jaw and breathing the smell that had changed so completely and wanting to hang on so hard that his shoulders had trembled with not holding tighter. Felt him breathing for real, air in and out against his forearm in the way it had once creeped him out that didn't happen and now creeped him out that did. Felt the sticky clammy chafed sore sated of after and at once ashamed of how _human _it was and wanting to make a talisman out of it. How carefully he'd pressed one hot palm to the sleeping shoulder and then lifted it away, watching the bloom of capillary refill and hissing an almost silent _mine now you bastards you can't have him back _to the place that never answered anyway.

But then he'd left. Almost immediately after, in fact, as if he'd scared himself. Which maybe he had. And maybe it was almost like drunk!sex and things with Cas were always awkward enough and this didn't change anything did it? Because you couldn't put the normal rules with Cas. He didn't know most of them and the ones he did know he most of the time didn't respect, and that was ok, wasn't it?

Just like it was ok that he woke up in his own bed alone at almost exactly 8:00am, and didn't mean anything that he'd rolled over and checked anyway. Or that he'd felt a twinge when it was clear no one had been there. Not a big one, of course, and gone immediately, and he didn't falter as he got up and made the bed and showered. Started to shave but then saw the purple mark below his jaw and thank fuck his brother was taller but Kevin was a short little shit so he'd let the stubble stay because at least it broke up the outline.

And it was absolutely because Kevin that boxers and a robe weren't enough somehow so t-shirt and heavy jeans and flannel shirt and jacket and socks and boots were nothing like armor, even as he added the boot knife and the .25 in the hidden holster inside the waistband and the switchblade, rosary, flasks, brass knuckles, extra clip, and Dad's M1911 in their designated pockets and slots of the jacket. It was just habit. Can never be too prepared.

He didn't realize he'd expected the kitchen to be empty until the sight of the figure at the table startled him. Cas had clearly also showered recently – and likewise opted against shaving, it seemed – but it was incredibly disconcerting to see him dressed in the old jeans and olive drab Henley Dean had loaned him and so casually using what was definitely Sam's laptop as he worked steadily through a half-empty plate of eggs and sausage and toast.

Cas looked up, pinning him awkwardly in place in the kitchen doorway, his face and eyes and voice completely unreadable and showing no signs of _oh by the way, about six hours ago I had a meltdown, went full rock star on my bedroom and added the word intercrural to your vocabulary with a totally inappropriate and still way too sexy tangent about the Iliad. Also I have the ass of a God. "_Hello, Dean."

Snap out of it. He hurried past, opened the fridge and buried his head in it. Not avoiding anything. Just hungry. Starving, actually. The egg carton was suspiciously light. They'd had a full dozen yesterday, what was this four left shit? He held out the open container. "What got Pinky and the Brain up before noon?"

The answering frown reminded him that for all the things that might or might not have changed, Cas' knowledge of pop culture wasn't one of them. "I'm sorry?"

He gestured at the plate of breakfast, knowing full well it hadn't appeared either out of thin air or courtesy of his brother, who half the time managed to screw up bagged salad. "Didn't Kevin –"

"I made them myself." There was a slightly offended undertone to the rebuttal, and Cas tilted his head towards the stove, where a frying pan still sat between the back burners. "Yours are waiting there, beneath the lid. Over medium, if I remember correctly."

His mouth opened, then closed again. You know, dude was a couple hundred million years old. Breakfast had been around a lot longer than Warner Brothers cartoons and there was always eHow. He really needed to stop assuming shit. "Right."

There were four eggs there, diner-perfect, with three sausage links tucked in next to them. He speared one with a fork and took a bite out of the end, dropping bread into the old-fashioned toaster and pushing the lever down before wandering over to look at the screen over Cas' shoulder. "Any word on the…oh."

He had been expecting something to do with the Skyfall brigade or research on Metatron or some kind of tutorial on a being-human thing he'd always taken for granted. Dean had not expected Cas to have opened Sam's shadow account on – though his ability to crack the password was no real surprise – much less the name that blared at him from the search heading, or the absolute lack of shame in Cas' face. "I'm trying to find my wife. I would like to contact her again, apologize, perhaps even –"

"I see." Dean knew it was childish to slam the computer closed and childish to be pleased at how close it had come to smashing Cas' fingers and he didn't fucking care as he dropped the fork and sausage onto Cas' plate and leaned in low, teeth clenched around his own sudden surge of temper that totally did not come from anything like a feeling of being kicked in the gut. "I know you're not a black belt in Social Skills, Cas, but generally speaking, if a thing happens like…happened…and then one of the dudes wakes up and decides 'I think I'll make breakfast and look up my ex'…do you get how that could come off as slightly, I don't know, rude?"

He sounded a little hysterical. Maybe he was. Kind of. But he had a point, goddammit, and Cas had no right to look at him like he was some raving lunatic or to sound so motherfucking _calm. "_It's because of what we did, Dean. It reminded me of her."

The toast popped up. He grabbed it, threw it in the sink, laughed like snapping teeth. "Oh, gee, thanks. I mean, I guess one pussy's pretty much like another, but I thought –"

"Don't -"

Cas tried to cut in, but Dean didn't care. "Was it the boobs? Because maybe mine aren't as big as Sam's, but –"

"I said don't, Dean." And now Cas stood up, and for a split second, there was a flare of something in his eyes that was thrilling and dangerous and _yes finally make him feel something _but gone again so fast it could have been imagined. "It wasn't anything about your body. You were…" He paused, his voice dropping as he picked up the still-impaled sausage, rotating it slowly, thoughtfully. "…kind to me. So was she."

It was sweet and wistful and vulnerable and Dean resented every word for just that, pulling up the sarcasm like the comforting press of the sidearm in the small of his back when he leaned against the counter, arms crossed. "You've just got a fetish for being scraped off the side of the road, I guess."

"You're angry."

"Damn right I'm angry, Cas! I'm fucking furious!" It felt way too good to finally say it, to roar it, even, but he held his ground. "You feed me all this crap for _years _about how if it weren't for Heaven and the goddamned angels you'd rather be here, but your wings haven't been clipped for forty-eight hours and you're trying to go back to some bitch who never even knew your real name? And I'm sorry, I've tried to be nice about it, but there is something _wrong _with a person who just sees some naked amnesiac coming out of the woods and thinks 'oh, I'm gonna take him home like a puppy and while I'm at it, let's _marry_ him.'"

Cas startled, as though Dean was saying something absurd rather than the stupidly blatantly elephant-in-the-room-for-fucking-years obvious. "It wasn't like that!

"Then why don't you fill me in," he spat, "especially if it's old home week?"

"She was trying to protect me."

There was a long, laden pause. Dean let his eyes slide slowly, deliberately up every inch of Cas' six feet of tight, athletic frame, writing the rebuttal on the silent scrutiny. "Protect you."

The answering sigh gave at least a hint that Cas wasn't totally oblivious to how absurd he sounded, but that didn't particularly help. It just made things a lot worse, really, especially when his answer came like he was laying things out for a particularly annoying and dense little kid. "When she found me, she gave me a blanket from her car and was going to call the police to come pick me up and see if we could figure out who I was."

"Seems almost not-crazy."

"She saw my feet, Dean." The edge of frustration was growing keener. " They were injured by the sharp rocks on the bottom of the reservoir, but while she was getting the blanket, they healed. We watched it happen. Between that and my amnesia, she became frightened and called her brother. He called me Logan and asked if I liked maple syrup or felt drawn to black leather and yellow spandex – what are you –"

The snort of laughter came despite his best efforts, and he hated that, waving it away and how much worse was it that for an instant, their eyes had connected in a way that wasn't all the parts that were too often like the rest of this mess. "Nevermind. Go on."

Cas nodded, his voice wandering back into itself as he rotated the fork, staring at the sausage as if fascinated by the reflection of the utility lights in the grease. And maybe he was. Who knew how that brain had ever worked, much less now. "I didn't sleep, become hungry, feel pain. I could heal others, hear radio and television transmissions, speak any language fluently, but I had no memory whatsoever. They probably should have turned me in, but she believed that things had been done to me, and until I had the capacity to consent to having them done again, she wasn't going to give me back, even if it put her at risk."

"How noble." Dean replied dryly. "Of course, she had no problem using you. Any woman who would hook up with a guy who is that many kinds of messed up and dangerous is asking to get herself Run Lola –"

Cas' eyes flicked up from the sausage, one eyebrow quirking no more than the movement of a thumb clicking off a safety. "Like a known monster hunter who shows up severely traumatized to start a relationship in fulfillment of a promise to someone else?"

Dean's breath sliced through his teeth, his spine suddenly rigid, his face flushing hot. "That –" His voice betrayed him, choking on the blow to the wound he hadn't even realized was still so raw, and he cleared his throat, refusing to let it show. "That was _not _the same. Lisa and I had something."

"And did it ever occur to you, Dean, that Daphne and I had something? That just maybe, I was attracted to her?" _Actually, it did. _Dean's jaw was clenched so tight his teeth ached, the pulse throbbing against his temples. _It more than occurred to me, it fucking gutted me when I saw the way you looked at her. And God help me when I showed her the article on Jimmy Novak and told her you were a missing person with a wife and kid in another state a part of me hoped she'd cry over you as dirtyuglyhard as I did when you walked into that fucking lake. _

But he said nothing. And Cas kept talking, pressing forward, gesturing with the fork in a way that should have been ridiculous. "She was beautiful, compassionate, intelligent, courageous, patient with me, a woman of faith who helped me use my gifts to heal people who were hurting. And I asked her to marry me and she said yes and we went to Las Vegas and it was silly and impulsive and _far_ from the worst thing I've ever done!"

It was a challenge, and he rose to it whether or not he should have. "And you found her. Daphne Allen. Currently in…Bakersfield, California, if I remember right. Go to your wife. Have babies. Help people. Live the whole fucking storybook!"

He had hoped for some reaction, but not for Cas to literally, physically flinch. The color drained from his face, and his mouth opened and shut twice before he found words again. "What did you say?"

A part of Dean wanted to apologize for whatever he'd obviously stepped on, but that was the good part of him, the nice guy part, the part that had never stood much of a chance against the fucking prideful asshole part when it got going like this. "I said if you miss her so bad, then GO. Make kids, make apple pie, build a hospital for disabled orphans and sing kumbaya to them every night. Or find some other beautiful woman of faith to hook up with. I don't give a shit." He turned away, telling himself it was for emphasis and not because any part of him couldn't bear to keep watching Cas' face as he busied his hands with new toast, managing to keep his voice ironclad at the expense of letting his face crumple where it couldn't be seen anyway. "But don't fucking come back, because I cannot handle any more of this here and gone again thing. If you leave now, you leave. It's time to pick a fucking side."

"That's not fair." Cas sounded cornered, and that hurt, fuck it hurt, because it meant the little nasty hissing voice in the back of his head that said he would never be worth being the thing that got chosen rather than the thing that got settled for or stuck with was right. "I never made you choose."

"No," he gave a short, coarse, cynical bark of a laugh. "You just played footsie with Crowley and let her and my -Ben be fed to the wolves. "

A breath of silence. Two. Three. He didn't dare turn around. "I never meant for any harm to come to them."

"You never meant a lot of things."

Another silence. Long enough for the toast to pop up as loud as a gunshot, and goddamn him for startling. He grabbed the knife and the butter, wishing it was something he could hack into properly without feeling silly, doing it anyway as he listened and tried not to. "I worked with Crowley so you wouldn't _have _to stay in this life. So you could have peace!"

Now he did turn around, ready to call bullshit, but he immediately wished he hadn't. Cas had that look again, that torn open kicked puppy look that was so old and so childlike and so impossible to stand against that it made him angrier than almost anything. "I was confused, Dean, confused and frightened and outmaneuvered and outgunned and I knew if anyone would know what to do with an impossible situation it would be you, and I _went to you_, but when I saw you there and how happy you were, I couldn't take that from you again, so when Crowley…" He trailed off, closing his eyes and tightening his lips on a shake of the head. "It doesn't matter why. I hurt you, and I keep hurting you and I'm just trying to…"

Another silence. He wandered slowly back to the table. Put the sausage down. Braced his palms against the scarred wood. Took a deep breath. Looked up again, spreading his arms like just shoot me. Make it quick and clean and let me go because I just can't any more. Eyes of suicide by cop that knew Dean was always packing. "It doesn't matter. I've screwed up again, and I've hurt you again and I know that, but beyond it…I don't know anything. It's very complicated."

"No shit."

The anger had gone. He hadn't even felt it go, but it had bled away and he felt like he was standing in a puddle of it now, dark and sticky and thick and starting to stink. He was exhausted – abruptly, profoundly, down to his marrow - and it had nothing to do with Trials or nearly losing Sam or too much everything else or three hours of sleep. Dean crossed the kitchen, dropping a hand onto the other man's shoulder and steering him back to the chair and pushing him down into it just so that he could take the other and prop his elbows on the table to hold his head before it broke from his shoulders beneath its own weight.

And even then, it took three more deep breaths and tightening every muscle in his shoulders and back to force the words across his tongue. "Look, Cas, you and me…I don't know what we are. I didn't know what we were before last night, and that didn't make things less weird. Being with Lisa was like living someone else's life, but at least I knew where we stood."

"I don't know where we stand." It was confession and agreement and surrender. Broken. Dead. Plaintive. Hopeful. "I don't know what I am any more. "

"Sounds familiar. Going to go back to Emmanuel? Because that makes me think of the kid from Webster. At least Cas suits you better." There it was again. Dean the asshole, Dean the bastard, Dean that can't not hurt the ones he…loves.

And Cas expected it. Accepted it. Didn't even flinch this time. "I know _who _I am. It's…I used to know. I used to follow my Father's orders without question and now I don't even know if I still trust Him. I'm a warrior with the blood of innocents on my hands and there is a part of me that wants nothing more than to just help people, but I don't know how now that I can't perform miracles and there is a part of me that I don't know if I can ever excise that was made to be a soldier and no matter how much I hate myself for it –"

Dean slipped in without thinking, finishing the thought effortlessly because it was his own as surely as any mirror. "- It feels damned good to chop some black-eyed bastard into little bitty pieces."

He took a long sip of cold coffee. Cas took it black. "But maybe that's what we're meant to do, you know? I've come to terms with it. Not all of what I've done, but that I'm meant to be the stone cold bastard who stands between the decent people and all the shit out there that would put them on the menu." It was an offer, an olive branch and a rope over the cliff's edge, and they both knew it.

"I don't know."

"I wasn't happy." It wasn't until he said it that Dean realized he'd never talked about it, and somehow, given what it had felt like when Cas had first brought them up (only a few minutes ago?!), it should have been harder than this. This felt bizarrely good, like lancing something deeply infected, the sting of the scalpel lost immediately to the soothing ease of pressure. "I mean, I was, but I wasn't. I loved her. Maybe I still do in a weird way, some part of me. I know I'll always love him. I think about my - that kid every damned day and I'd still give a lot if there was a way that I could keep them safe without having to cut them off or make them remember all that crap, but the whole suburbs thing?" He let go of a long breath. "PTA and soccer practice and the homeowner's association…I didn't fit."

Cas sighed, shaking his head as if trying to dislodge the memories. "It wasn't me - not really - but there's a part of me that wishes it could be, that wonders if I could _make _it be, because it was just…" The thought trailed off into the ellipses of too many things unresolved.

His answer formed around a long, slow nod that was full of waffles from the freezer burned a little around the edges in ignorance and drenched in too much artificial syrup and how she had still smiled and laughed and bounced a little on the bed so that the strap of her nightgown fell from one shoulder. How he had bent and kissed it and she had smelled like sleep and soap and sandlewood and not the faintest trace of gun oil. "Nice."

"I don't think we're nice."

It should have been an insult, but he knew what it really was and smiled. "Not particularly. Except I've seen enough monsters to know we're not that, either."

Cas took his coffee back and finished it, long fingers latticed on the empty mug. "So what are we?

"I don't know." Dean paused, bracing himself, because some things easy to throw as blows were all but impossible to say calmly. "But I do know that I still meant what I said. Whatever we are, you can hurt me in ways that not a lot of people have ever even been able to get close to, and I'm done. If something yanks your ass back to Heaven or you get possessed or zapped or have to save the world, I can deal with that, ok? That's different. But if you just walk out on me…."

"What if I stay?"

It was a terrifying question, and he retreated again behind the familiar glibness, but it felt as sturdy as one of Charlie's foam swords. "There's always the family business. Lotta ex-angels to round up; expert might be pretty useful. There's a smug son of a bitch upstairs who needs to be yanked off his high horse. I think there's probably more Leviathan out there somewhere, and of course you've got your routine poltergeists, werewolves, ancient pagan Gods…"

He couldn't keep going. Cas took at least a year to eat an entire piece of toast before he answered and how could he even swallow when Dean was sure that all the moisture had left the world along with the air and time and whatever kept his stomach a solid rather than a churning mass of liquid fuck you. And how did he sound so calm, so innocently curious. "Would you say you're looking for a partner in crime?"

But then their eyes met, and it wasn't innocent, and he felt himself smile, and damn those definitely not solid insides that did a complete backflip. "Kinda, yeah, I guess so." And how did he feel like a teenager with a crush and a thousand years old and this fucking jaded and that fucking naïve except that this was CAS, and if there was one thing he'd had to come to terms with about that angel-or-whatever-he-was-now, it was to not expect things to happen anything like supposed to. "So what's the verdict?"

"Do I always have to ride in the back?" Cas asked it so seriously that he chuckled, and he was about to say something about it being a little early in the relationship to start arguing about who was the bottom, but he caught the movement out of the corner of his eye at the last second, and he'd rarely been more grateful for a Hunter's sixth sense.

Sam was awake, and Dean's heart, already a wreck, swelled and caught in his throat and threatened to choke fucking _tears _out of him no matter how much he tried to argue that this wasn't the time to be a girl. Because his little brother was still a good thirty pounds south of fighting weight and the dark circles were still too shadowed, but his color was back and his eyes were only bleary with sleep and his step was steady and strong. He had stopped in the doorway, frowning and staring at them, his elbow brushing the top of the doorframe as he ran one hand through his usual epic hurricane of morning hair.

There were track marks on his arm and a long scrape up his ribs, but he was _alive _and _there _and maybe they hadn't anything like won, but for once they hadn't lost, either, and suddenly exes seemed the most ludicrous thing he'd ever fought with anyone about. They didn't fucking matter. Daphne and Lisa and Amelia and even Meg and Ruby and that fucking Amazon bitch and _none of it _mattered because it was all _then_. And this was _now, _and in the now, they were all alive and all human and the rest could sort itself out and maybe he was even sort of starting to believe it _would _because seriously, they might be fucked up sons of bitches, but they were good. Fuck that. When it came to what they did? They were the _best_.

Dean reclaimed his sausage, lifting it to his brother like a salute. "Sorry, Cas, that's between you and the moose."

Sam froze mid-stretch, his frown deepening in bafflement, his voice still sleep-thickened. "What is?"

"I would like to…" Cas hesitated, catching Dean's eye, and there was a glint of something that was just barely warning enough that Dean didn't jump _too _obviously when a hand found his knee under the table and squeezed. "…join the family business."

Sam was already halfway to the refrigerator, and he didn't turn back as he huffed a bleary sort of chuckle. "I don't care what you call it, but if you're going to do it at three-thirty in the morning again, shut the ventilation grates. I almost closed hell last night, and after that, a guy needs his sleep."


End file.
